Giant Drinks
I’m a sucker for giant size drinks. They make me feel like I’m in the pub version of Mr.Greedy.* At an gimmicky Austrian restaurant in West London last year I enjoyed myself with one-litre steins, in Tampere I had the opportunity to go a litre better with a monstrous two-litre tube of beer. I passed it up, being the only drinker, but appreciated the visuals. The tube comes with a tap at the bottom, and sits solidly on your table, soaring a metre or more up. Attached to the top of this skyscraper of booze is a tube of iced water which pushes down into the beer, keeping it cold.
My sources tell me that these contraptions have been seen in Britain, in Hogshead pub. But the bar in Finland seemed half-filled with English drinkers and it was certainly new to them. They all wanted one, and they were all in front of me at the bar, turning my one minute wait for an ordinary beer into five minutes of frustrated technological awe.
*OK, my life is not too far away from this anyway.